Monday, 24 November 2014

One of Elmore Leonard’s ten rules for writing was “Try to leave out the
part that readers tend to skip.” Excellent advice that makes very good sense,
only exactly which parts are those?

On the surface it would seem obvious—the boring stuff, the longwinded
explanations and unnecessary interludes, right? We all know what he meant. But
when it comes to recognising the skip-worthy in our own stories it’s never
quite so clear cut.

Scenes that are really going nowhere and have no purpose being in the
story aren’t too hard to spot, but the bits that are just bland or that we’ve
convinced ourselves have to be there for the story to make sense, they can slip
through draft after draft.

So how do you spot the skippable parts and skip them before the reader
gets a chance to?

Monday, 17 November 2014

There is a lot of
advice out there for writers. Rules, guidelines, tips. Most of it has some
merit, but if you were to follow every little suggestion it would be very
constricting and frankly would rob you of a lot of the fun of writing.

But if you were only
willing to follow one piece of advice, what would it be? Is there one piece of
advice that trumps all others?

The sensible and
reasonable answer is that it depends. It depends on what kind of writer you
are, what your personal strength and weaknesses happen to be, what your goals
are. Each writer is different, each writer may require a different blah, blah,
blah.

And that is all very
true, but putting all sense and reason to one side, I say yes, there is one piece
of advice which if you follow, ignoring all others, will still improve your
writing immeasurably (or measurably if you happen to be particularly adept at
measuring things).

Monday, 10 November 2014

My 10 year old
nephew asked me if I knew of a book that taught kids how to write a story. It
would be nice if this was because he already wanted to be a writer, but my nephew has no love for writing. He enjoys reading and watching
movies, but when it comes to writing something himself,
he’d much rather stick his face in an iPad (for several hours).

However, his English
teacher keeps giving him story-writing assignments, which he finds a chore. In
addition to which, there are other kids in his class who can spit out a story
rat-a-tat-tat

He would also like to be
able to write a good story quickly and without having to spend ages staring at
a wall.

I’m not aware of any “how to write fiction” books specifically aimed at
children. So, instead, I sat him down and attempted to walk him through the
basics of what makes a story a story by having him come up with something on
the spot.

Monday, 3 November 2014

Let’s say you’re
familiar with most of the basic guidelines when it comes to writing fiction.
You know none of these suggestions guarantees a good story, but you try to
apply them as much as possible. Can’t hurt right?

So you have a
sympathetic main character with a clear goal, obstacles in the way, high
stakes, an action-packed opening, a minimum of adverbs, active characters and
you keep it all moving at a breakneck pace.

But when you show
this tightly constructed thrill-ride to people whose judgement you trust, you
don’t get the reaction you were hoping for. They don’t hate it, in fact they
have lots of nice things to say about it, but it just doesn’t grab them.

They like the genre,
have no problem understanding what happens and why, and certainly there are
bestselling books out there with similar premises and characters so this sort
of story definitely can work, and yet... it just doesn’t.

What is the missing
ingredient? And what’s the best way to make sure it isn’t missing from your
story?